The set-up: For a standup, perhaps the most subversive gesture possible is sitting down. It takes some boldness to believe you can entertain an audience – in this case for an hour and three-quarters – with what appears to be cosy chat. But then in this artform, dominated as it is by provocateurs and nonconformists, maybe Bill Cosby is what rebels look like. He hardly swears, he doesn't mention race, he execrates drink and drug abuse, he talks uncomplicatedly of God, and he promotes family life, albeit by complaining about it fondly.

And yet, even if Cosby will never be remembered as a countercultural pioneer (like a Pryor or a Carlin), the scale of his achievements is almost frightening. Born poor, the son of a sailor and a maid, he excelled at school, in both sport and academic study, becoming class president and winning a university scholarship while doing part-time jobs to help support his family. Giving all that up, he instantly became successful as a comedian, going on to be the first African American to star in a network TV series (I Spy), as well as the first to win an acting Emmy (three of them, plus one for variety shows and nine Grammies).

By the time this performance was recorded, he had completed a doctorate in education, and was about to launch The Cosby Show, the decade's biggest sitcom, which would make him the best-paid entertainer in the world for two years running (1986 and 1987). He also sings, and can play jazz guitar and drums. At 75, he's still extremely funny.

Funny, how? What Bob Dylan's ragged whine is to popular music, Bill Cosby's slow, long-suffering drawl is to comedy: unique, immediately identifiable and inseparable from its time. In the 1980s, the middle-aged Cosby sounds almost grand-avuncular, like he's afflicted with a verbal slouch brought on by the weight of parenthood. Parents everywhere, including this one, cannot help but nod in sympathy.

He doesn't sit down all the time, of course, and when he stands he is a brilliant physical comedian. His impressions of the different walks employed by drunks would be funny even if it were silent. This is what Cosby does best, in fact – most of his themes are cobwebbed cliches – he observes mannerisms. His famous story about giving his children chocolate cake for breakfast is really just a series of precise impressions of them, and of his enraged wife.

Cosby's traditionalism does not mean that he lacks subtlety, however. Like Stewart Lee, with whom he otherwise shares very little, he is a master of the long pause and the unspoken punchline. Deriding mothers' obsession with clean underwear in the event of road accidents (another cliche there), he says: "Whether you hit the truck or not, you're going to have soiled underwear. Because first you say it, then you do it." Not many jokes, even from Lee, need so much thinking-through.

The conservative ambience of his act also makes his cynicism that bit more bracing. Explaining his own mother's doting attitude to her grandchildren, he says to them: "You're looking at an old person who is trying to get into heaven now." When Cosby's own application there is submitted, he'll merit all the praise that we can give him.

Steal this: "People say children are charming because they tell the truth. That's a lie. I've got five of them. They only tell the truth if they're in pain."

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